Zhihu VS Toutiao: What should you do if a big V is poached by someone with a high salary?

KOL stands for Key Opinion Leader. KOL operation is also an important task for many operators today. In essence, a big V is a type of Kol.

Is this question in this article difficult to answer? It’s not difficult to answer. The answer is: wish him well!

Of course, we still need to work hard to retain employees. This is our duty as a platform and especially as an operator. It is very difficult to cultivate users, especially core users, but it is very easy to lose them.

What’s more, he was poached with a high salary?

When it comes to core user loss , the reasons are nothing more than the following:

• The product experience is not good (the product team has changed, there is no innovation, and the product is messing around);
• When the user life cycle is over, they get tired of playing and naturally churn away;
• The operations staff are not doing their job well or are simply not putting in enough effort.

It actually takes a lot of effort to develop a user model like a big V. One-to-one operation is the most basic and dumbest method, and it is also necessary to establish various rules, incentives, gameplay, etc. to maintain it.

• In fact, many people stay on this platform because of feelings or friends, but feelings are sometimes the most unreliable thing. The most direct thing to break a relationship is interest, and the most direct interest is money.
• Users are attracted by new product forms because they get tired of the old and love the new.
• The platform is not enough to provide him with the value he wants.

On many platforms today, operators actually disdain to have contact with users. They would rather spend their time on traffic diversion, meetings, discussions, cooperation, activities, etc. Of course, it depends on what type of operation work it is, but in user operation work, especially work like KOL, the more contact you have with users and the closer you get to them, the more benefits you will reap, because the more valuable users you can control, the stronger your ability is.

The relationship with users is like the love between husband and wife. Many operations teams do not quite understand the principles of hard and soft tactics, sugar-coated bullets, coercion and inducement that I mentioned in my previous articles. They are too blunt in handling user issues, and cannot understand the feelings with users. They pin their hopes on product retention and user activity, but do not spend enough time on it. At least for now, there are no completely reliable solutions to the problems of human nature, human heart, and human feelings in terms of products and algorithms. If you are ruthless to your users, they will inevitably leave you. Operations personnel should look for problems within themselves, summarize more, and reflect more often.

If you know your users well enough and realize that it is impossible to keep them, it is better for everyone to part ways amicably and wish each other well in a friendly and generous way. Who knows, one day they may decide that your place is the best and come back.

When Chopstick Brothers promoted Memoirs of a Geisha on Mop in 2007, it was not popular. Later, it became popular with Oldboy. When we approached them again in 2013, they had already said, "Talk to my agent."

Yi Xiaoxing, also known as Beast, became famous on Mop in 2006. His videos back then were absolutely classics, and the image of the word "Beast" on A4 paper was his signature. The administrators at that time were all quite familiar with him. When Wanhe Tianyi's "Never Expected" became popular and he subsequently became a famous director, all my WeChat friends blocked me.

I was confused at first, but after thinking about it, I suddenly understood. Everyone is striving to pursue his or her own value. Users are profit-seeking. A platform may only be able to meet a certain part of their growth stage, but not all of it. When you cannot satisfy them and provide them with the opportunity to advance to a higher level, that may be the day when their relationship ends.

Instead of trying to save the relationship, it is better to part ways amicably. Instead of being resentful, it is better to be more open-minded and cultivate new reserve forces.

A truly excellent platform should form a circulation and recycling mechanism in terms of products and operations to ensure that users are constantly upgraded and metabolized, those with potential are stimulated and then cultivated, the excellent ones become more excellent, and those with great abilities are given more responsibilities. Instead of keeping a mistress in a golden house and hoping to tie the user down forever.

What do platform and operators need to do? Squeeze out all the surplus value they have within their manageable life cycle. Of course, this may sound a bit blunt, but it is very straightforward. It depends not only on the quality of the product, but even more on the quality of the operators. Quality refers to the means, methods, rules, and mechanisms.

Let’s talk about whether it is a good idea to recruit big Vs with high salaries from the perspective of introducing KOLs.

There are only two ways to generate Kols: recruiting from outside and cultivating by the platform itself.

Pulling it from outside means directly pulling ready-made information. The cost of this method will be very high. In recent years, knowledge has begun to be monetized at an accelerated pace, and the cost for a single user will only increase and cannot be reduced. I didn’t have to spend a penny 10 years ago, but when I tried again last year, the chance of success without spending any money was 0. Another problem with big Vs brought in from outside is their low loyalty. For example, do celebrities have loyalty? No loyalty at all. Problems that can be solved with money are not problems, but human nature is always greedy. When he was still a rookie, he was good in keeping with his original intention. But when he was enslaved by money, his original intention was long gone, and there was no such thing as loyalty. If you can offer a high price, so can others. It just depends on who has more money.

The platform cultivates itself and relies on its operational capabilities, which is a long-term process. It is a slow process from quantitative change to qualitative change. It will not be effective in the short term, but will only show results in the long term. Of course, once the volume starts to increase, it will be very terrifying because it will only increase more and more. But for many platforms, they can’t wait and there are few good operators, so they might as well pick the ready-made ones.

I prefer the platform to cultivate itself, but of course it is better to have both and maintain a relatively moderate ratio.

Therefore, I do not think that poaching people with high salaries is a good thing, at least in the long run. It is not a good thing. It will disrupt the market, raise prices, and affect the friendship between platforms.

Finally, let’s summarize with a few key words :

• Be kind and responsible (when kol is around)
• Goodbye (when kol leaves)
• Forget the past (when kol comes back)
• Don’t be upset, find a backup (the platform that poached employees)
• Know when to stop, don’t forget old friends, and improve loyalty (a platform for poaching people)